Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Corn Ethanol's Dirty Little Secret

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Corn Ethanol's Dirty Little Secret
  • Date: Sat, 01 Sep 2007 21:52:27 -0700

A cliche-breaking book that I read a while back, "Sprawl: a compact history" by Robert Bruegmann, shows that there are a lot of misconceptions about the nature of sprawl and its causes and cures. Breugmann points out that the northeastern US is denser than most of Europe (Germany is 598 people/sq mi, France is half that, versus Connecticut at 723 or New Jersey at 1183. New York State is much denser than France. US big cities and suburbs are denser than the average in the world. Europe's sprawl is at least as bad as the US's--look at London and Paris. One fact that amazed me was that the greater Los Angeles area, stereotyped as the essence of sprawl, is now denser than the greater New York area. There is no reason, other than cheap gasoline and an anti-transit attitude, that the US couldn't have superb transit in its metropolitan areas if we wished it.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com

"Guyton Durnin" <gwdurnin@hotmail.com> wrote:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
The US will never look like Europe. We are way to spread out to be able to
have a similar mass transit system. Sprawl is a condition that is most
common in the US; few other countries experience it. Instead, they just
have gridlock.







Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page